PHILOMENA: What does it mean to be a Christian?

Every person is a Moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

-Mark Twain.

It was a question designed more to wound than to inquire … “Why don’t you go to church more often?” she asked me, giving me a daring look. “Why don’t you pray at night or wear a cross?”

My mind was blurred. “Should I really go to church and learn every prayer to call myself a Christian?”  I thought but hesitated to answer, murmuring something unclear like I always do under pressure.

She was grinning with a deep self-satisfaction at seeing my puzzled and slightly flustered facial expression. At that moment I felt lost and beaten. Yet, although I had lost the verbal skirmish something inside me was whispering the truth. That whisper grew stronger over time but remained silently sleeping inside my mind until the night I saw “Philomena”.

“Philomena” is not only a profoundly touching story of a mother who embarks on a 50 year long search for her son. It is a heartbreaking story of a forced separation. And in many scenes we perceive and stand in awe at the power of the indestructible love that was once an umbilical cord. No matter how far her son is, Philomena remains strongly attached to him by the umbilical spirit which remains long after the physical cord has been snipped.  Even after Antony’s birth, once the cord was cut and they were physically separated, there always was an invisible force that brought them together in their thoughts and prayers. And what may seem the main theme of the film – an almost inexplicably strong telepathic connection between  mother and child and the constant never-ending search for each other – should be viewed as a secondary theme.

Yet something that remains hidden between the lines and in my opinion constitutes the main message of the film.

Philomena is a young pretty girl in 1950s Ireland who falls in love and gets pregnant. Her father - ashamed of her sins and the social judgments they will engender - leaves the daughter at a convent with nuns. Her life at the convent is hard especially considering her pregnancy. There is no doctor present when she is giving birth to her child – given the baby’s podalic position this is a fearful absence.. Philomena is often humiliated and constantly reminded of having committed a deadly sin. The  waves of condemnation continue to engulf her even at the moment of birth, which is almost a moment of death given the risk to the baby’s life.

Having experienced a cruel separation from her son and learned of his adoption, Philomena leaves the convent and starts a new  life hiding her secret from everyone who knew her. Until one day she cannot handle the pain anymore and reveals the hard truth to her daughter and a BBC journalist Martin.

Being the opposite of her, Martin represents the majority of us. He is the one who insists on unveiling the truth about the adoption of Antony and he is the one who is determined to find him, separating “the good” from “the bad”.

Thanks to Martin we find out the ugly truth about the convent policy and the adoption business they operated for many years. We can at last see the dark side of the Church’s operation. We see the religious order that had no scruples or regrets about separating children from their mothers and being paid a thousand pounds for each baby. We see the organization that never gave a penny to the desperate mothers and hid all the information on the adoption. We see the nuns who left pregnant women “in the hands of God” and in many cases let them and their children die while giving birth.  In short we see the Church that hides its own sinful practices behind the sins of suffering mothers, mothers who will never find peace or pardon.

What we see happen to Philomena is a unique story, but not because the pain caused to her was unique. She was not the only mother who was cruelly separated from her child. What makes her story unique is her ability to stay Christian even in a world where the “Holy Mother Church” is far from perfect, and even further from giving good example as a “Holy Mother”.

Philomena is so affected by the idea of being a sinner, of being inferior to other people that when her son is taken away from her and adopted without her permission, she still bears no anger towards the nuns. She manages her anger so well that sometimes it seems unfair not to have it. And in many scenes we see Martin express the hate, anger and suffering which are really hers. But in the end, while Martin remains a slave of all the negativity he feels towards the Church and the world, Philomena liberates herself by forgiving everyone who ever brought her any suffering.

Her ability to forgive the sins of others and her ability to see only the good in everyone she meets outweighs the persistent guilt of her “dreadful sin”. The film brilliantly exposes the irony of a Christianity obsessed with punishment for sins while leaving aside the most important rule Jesus ever taught us: the power of forgiveness and giving another chance to start again ....

As I watched the film, as it moved me internally, a question kept echoing round my mind. The question asked with such pharisaical satisfaction by the woman on the street.

Does it really take to wear a cross or recite formulaic prayers to be a Christian? Is it enough to cross the confines of a church to be reunited with the divine spark within us? Can one still be Christian and not belong to any religious confession? What is the relationship between religious affiliation and belief in God?

While most of the people sitting  next to me in the cinema discussed the power of the mother’s love (an obvious message) and some even said they were falling asleep (!), I was astonished to hear none of them speak of Philomena’s outstanding humanity. Her humanity moved me, it touched deep layers of my consciousness, it  deserved my gratitude which I am expressing here. I am grateful to her and all the other people whose beauty may never be revealed to the majority. But, in the end, what does the majority know about beauty, if they condemned Jesus?

That is a question I would like to ask the woman who stopped me in the street.

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